2013 SCE FCU Annual Report

Modern Technology with Good Old-fashioned Service

"A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

At SCE Federal Credit Union, it actually goes beyond this. We do not have customers, we have members. Every single person who has an account with us is an owner of the Credit Union. We make every effort to be laser-focused on providing the very best for our members. In addition to offering highly competitive rates, convenient products and services, and advanced, secure technology, we believe it all comes down to service. We can be superior in all other areas, but if we are not serving our members well and striving to provide “Wow” experiences for them, we would be missing the mark. Thank you for allowing us the privilege to be of service.

Report of the Chairwoman & CEO

As you will read from the information provided in this annual report, your Credit Union had another successful year financially. This, of course, is great news as we need to be financially profitable to stay in business. But maximizing our profits is not the principal metric SCE FCU uses to define success. As a member-owned, not-for-profit financial institution, we evaluate our profit needs every year by simply asking ourselves how much net income we need to generate a reasonable amount of reserves and to allow us the opportunity to research and implement more services to offer our member-owners.

Our overriding definition of success is being there when our members need us, providing the best possible pricing for all our services, and by being active participants within our local communities. Even during the economic “dark days” we all experienced in the last few years, your Credit Union was not forced to close branches or lay off any employees.

We believe, and many members have confirmed, the primary reason we survived the “dark days” is because we care about our member-owners. We care by being very proactive in trying to help when they’re faced with financial challenges. Even though we did not engage in the sort of practices that eventually burst the mortgage bubble and helped send the country into a very deep recession, we reached out to our members and offered to modify their mortgage and other loans until they got back on their feet.

But we must always combine offering the highest level of service to our members with being proactive and continually researching and implementing new products, utilizing emerging technologies to improve our deliverables and service profile. To that end, SCE FCU added a number of new products and improved existing ones – all in an effort to make your financial experience as easy and stress-free as possible.

A sample of these new and improved services include:

We developed and installed a state-of-the-art lending system that will allow members to apply online and get an instant response, as well as assist our member service staff in providing a much higher and quicker level of personal assistance to members.

We vastly improved our direct deposit program. You can now deposit a check by simply taking a picture of it with your smartphone and sending it to us. That same technology was installed in most of our ATMs as well.

We improved Snapshot, our personal financial management program. With Snapshot you can access all your accounts, even from other financial institutions, from any PC anywhere. Soon you will be able to access Snapshot from your smartphone.

We now make buying your dream house easier. If you are looking to buy a house (or refinance your current loan), you can simply go to our website and complete an application in minutes. Even better, we have trained loan officers ready to assist you every step of the way.

As you can see by this list, our commitment to our members is not just to add technology and reduce, or even eliminate, the personal contact as many banks are doing these days. Our commitment is to always be here with the highest level of technology AND to be just a visit to one of our branches or a phone call away.

“If you get everybody in the company involved in customer service, not only are they ‘feeling the customer’ but they’re also getting a feeling for what’s not working.” ~ Penny Handscomb

Everyone – from your Board of Directors to Senior Management staff and every employee – is committed to serving our members. After all, without you we are not us.